


The Beauty of the Beast

by ClareGuilty



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Crusader Reinhardt, Dragon Omnic, I don't even know what to tag this, Omnic Crisis, Reinhardt fights a giant robot dragon, Young Reinhardt Wilhelm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 13:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18195344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClareGuilty/pseuds/ClareGuilty
Summary: Claws – larger than a man – swiped at the crusader. Reinhardt blocked the blow with his shield, bowing under the force of the impact. The glowing blue light kept the beast at bay, imbuing the knight with a strength he had not known before. Two more deafening crashes of metal claws against the energy field and it shattered into thousands of brilliant white particles.Reinhardt surged forward, tearing his axe through the machine’s jaw. Metal squealed and splintered, shredding easily under the force of the knight’s strike.The beast reared back, mangled jaw hanging uselessly beneath its glowing red sensors.Flames erupted from the dragon’s destroyed maw. The machine did breathe fire.But Reinhardt had ruined whatever perfect weapon the omnics had created in the beast’s throat. The flames sprayed outward in a wild and irregular shape, flawed by man’s imperfect touch. The precision and power of the omnic’s firebreather was gone, stolen in a single blow.The crusader bellowed. Deep, warm laughter echoing off the machine’s scales and reverberating on the concrete and cobbled stone.A brave knight slays a fearsome dragon.





	The Beauty of the Beast

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was a warm-up I did! I just wanted to try out something new and I was inspired by a joking request a friend had made.  
> I know this isn't my usual style, but it was nice to branch out a little! I wasn't going to post it, but a follower told me I had nothing to lose, so here I am!

The beast was gargantuan. Two stories tall, hissing and screeching and clanging as its metal scales beat together. Flightless, its futile steel wingspan scraped against the ground. Sparks erupted in glorious showers every time the beast moved.

A dragon. Straight out of the myths and legends of old, giant and serpentine. The robotic facsimile of a storybook creature fashioned out of metal and machinery, imbued with a soul of artificial intelligence more fearsome than any natural instinct.

Not a beast. A machine.

Synthetic to the core. Designed by machines, for machines. The omnics had only recently begun to develop a sense of art, a distinct culture that operated outside of human understanding. This was a reflection of that art.  
The God Program wanted a weapon designed after what humans feared most. It willed into existence a creature that they had only conceived in fantasy. Forging their legends into reality then programming them into perfect and efficient killers.

Who better to fight a dragon than a knight in shining armor?

Just as the omnics had pulled from the myths of old, the humans had done the same. These were their legends, they had written themselves the victor time and time again. Chivalry and knighthood, honor and glory. Humanity had created warriors reborn in steel and combustion reactions, imbued with technology and firepower beyond what the knights of old had ever even dreamed. The Crusaders were born of the same necessity as the beast. 

Humanity would eradicate the machines, or the machines would eradicate humanity. This battle was a reflection of that conflict through the smallest lens. A stage-play. A simulation of the war that had ravaged the earth played out with one man and one machine. 

Reinhardt Wilhelm looked upon the beast and smiled. His grin was not boisterous - not sadistic even. He wore a look of satisfaction. This was everything he had lived for. The perfect challenge.

The beast stamped its awful claws against the ground. Steel clanging and dragging against the concrete earth. Sensors, a crude facsimile of eyes, glowed red. Six of them, arranged in a perfect geometric pattern along the machine’s snout. Teeth. Polished, sharp edges that glinted as the caught the light. Steel and titanium plates overlaid like scales down the beast’s neck, over its body.

It was constructed beautifully.

The omnics were perfect. Incapable of the human error that left tiny flaws in everything they tried to create. When the omnics created, they created immaculately, with absolute precision. Patterns and calculations and programming that happened before a man could even blink.

And they had created this.

Reinhardt was almost repentant to have to destroy it.

His perfect challenger. His antithesis. He was created to destroy this beast just as it was created to destroy him. The nuclear-powered crusader sent to kill the mechanical dragon in the shadow of an ancient castle.

The old stone loomed in perfect view; parapets and towers and ramparts. A structure as old as the legends that stood reborn in its midst. The knight wondered if the beast could understand the coincidence. The symbolism. 

It mattered none – if the beast could comprehend or understand or generate anything resembling thought. Nothing would be able to save it.

Reinhardt gripped his axe. He was steel and firepower and the heart of a man who would stop at nothing to save his race. This beast – this machine – was beautiful, but it would be destroyed.

Barely a hundred meters between them, they faced off. The six glowing sensors against Reinhardt’s one blue eye. For a moment, the beast, unceasingly loud, was still. It was the closest thing to silence.

Reinhardt’s mind flickered briefly, curious if this beast could spit flames just as the dragons of human legend. He was about to find out.

He charged, nearly a ton of armor and 340 kilograms of flesh rocketed forward by nuclear firepower. The dragon lurched toward the knight, movements too pure and too calculated to be biological. Machine through and through.

Noise returned all at once and then became deafening as the titanium of Reinhardt’s axe collided with the scales of the beast. Even propelled by its own atomic force, the blade merely glanced off the titanic and impenetrable mail.

Claws – larger than a man – swiped at the crusader. Reinhardt blocked the blow with his shield, bowing under the force of the impact. The glowing blue light kept the beast at bay, imbuing the knight with a strength he had not known before. Two more deafening crashes of metal claws against the energy field and it shattered into thousands of brilliant white particles.

Reinhardt surged forward, tearing his axe through the machine’s jaw. Metal squealed and splintered, shredding easily under the force of the knight’s strike.

The beast reared back, mangled jaw hanging uselessly beneath its glowing red sensors.

Flames erupted from the dragon’s destroyed maw. The machine did breathe fire.

But Reinhardt had ruined whatever perfect weapon the omnics had created in the beast’s throat. The flames sprayed outward in a wild and irregular shape, flawed by man’s imperfect touch. The precision and power of the omnic’s firebreather was gone, stolen in a single blow.

The crusader bellowed. Deep, warm laughter echoing off the machine’s scales and reverberating on the concrete and cobbled stone.

The beast thrashed, metal wings dragging and clanging on every surface and drowning out Reinhardt’s joy. Flames licked at the steel and the sky, warming Reinhardt’s skin and giving his armor a warm glow.

He charged again. This time, his axe made contact with the steel that composed the dragon’s powerful joints. Metal crumpled under metal.

If the dragon knew pain, it would have screeched. Roared and bellowed and succumbed to the weakness that is ingrained in mortal flesh.

Instead, the beast fought back. A blade-like wing slammed into the crusader and he skidded backwards. Teeth, bent and misshapen now, fell towards the knight’s face as the dragon swung its own deformed head.

Reinhardt’s shield burst forth again, and the tarnished metal of the beast glanced off the blue light. Sparks nearly blinded the knight as the dragon’s head skidded across the ground, but Reinhardt would not waste his chance.

The axe came down on the glowing red glass of the sensors, blinding the beast.

Once again, there was no roar of pain, no reflexive flail of the dragon’s limbs as Reinhardt stole its sight. When Reinhardt had lost his own eye, the pain had been unbearable. He had nearly collapsed.

The beast would not surrender so easily. Claws and wings and scales battered against the crusader’s armor. Reinhardt braved every blow.

He swung his axe again, the fiery blade ripping through the omnic’s machinery. Reinhardt destroyed whatever current had run through this beast like blood through veins. The cluster of machinery and processors that had made up the creature’s mind were smashed and shattered into shards of silicon. He tore through the metal and circuitry, gutting the beast until it was a heap of scrap and melted steel.

Reinhardt mourned for the beauty of the beast, the precision with which it moved. Now, destroyed and lifeless – no – powerless, it was nothing but an ugly scar on the ground which it lay. The earth, natural and green and full of life, would reclaim the concrete and the steel and the wiring. Moss would grow on the impenetrable scales. Flowers would bloom in the gashes left by Reinhardt’s axe. Rust would eat away at the metal skeleton until the legend was all but forgotten.

The same fate awaited man as well. Mortal flesh would turn necrotic, wasting away much faster than steel and feeding back into the endless rhythm of the earth, otherwise oblivious to the war that raged on its surface. Even if man claimed victory over the omnics, their race would perish by some other plague or war or flood, but they would fight against that death as well. They would cling to their legends and raise army after army against whatever fate tried to claim them.

What machine had that tenacity? What machine possessed the will to fight generation after generation, carrying the memories of legends century after century?

Reinhardt did not look back as he returned to the castle.

**Author's Note:**

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